Dear Colleagues:

This is one of my favorite times of the year. It is a time when we celebrate you … our employees. The celebration begins at our Milestone Service Awards banquet and culminates with National Hospital Week. But it’s the recognition of our Customer Service is the Key program honorees that really makes me proud.

The CSK program allows anyone — patients, residents, visitors, faculty, staff and volunteers — to recognize individuals for outstanding work performance and attentive service.

So what are the keys that create excellent customer service?

Know your service. Whether it’s patient care, accounting, marketing or environmental services — we need to understand how we fit in, what’s our place at UF Health Shands and how our work is important to creating loyal customers for our health care system.

Be friendly. A smile and a kind word go a long way, not just with patients and their families but also with each other.

Use our hospitality standards. Everything that we learn in monthly hospitality huddles and during hospitality training and the tools that we are given provide a positive experience for our patients, their families and visitors and our faculty and staff.

Show respect. Always be courteous and respectful to anyone you encounter.

Listen. This is one of the simplest secrets for top customer service. It means you are truly hearing what others are saying.

Be responsive. If you don’t know the answer to a question or are unable to solve an issue, get help … find someone who can figure things out so your customer feels heard and cared about.

Use any feedback you receive. If a customer provides feedback, good or bad, take the time to review it and decide if you’re meeting expectations or need to make adjustments to improve customer service.

The key to good customer service is building good relationships with your customers.

In the next few pages, you’ll read about some of our team members who have gone above and beyond and made an impact on our patients, families, visitors and co-workers. Each person is holding a chalkboard that lists their individual keys to success, a creative list of words and phrases that inspire them daily in their roles at UF Health and throughout their personal life journeys. As you read each page, I challenge you to ask yourself what are the keys to your own success. What inspires you and motivates you? These employees understand the keys to success and are great representatives of our organization’s values, mission and goals.

Each year, we receive thousands of CSK nominations detailing stories of generosity, attention and action.

They include acts as simple as a gesture that brightened someone’s day, or as crucial as a quick response that prevented a medical error. CSK nomination forms are located on our nursing units, at our reception desks and on the Bridge on the UF Health Shands Human Resources site. Please continue to nominate your colleagues, as we love to celebrate our faculty, residents, staff and volunteers. Thank you for supporting the CSK program.

Thank you,

Janet Christie

Senior Vice President, Human Resources

UF Health Shands

Submitting a CSK nomination is quick and simple. Here’s a short list of things to please include:

• Your first and last name
• Your phone number and email (optional)
• Your status (i.e., employee, patient, visitor/family, etc.)
• Nominee’s first and last name
• Nominee’s title (if known)
• The story — tell us what happened

It feels great to help recognize a co-worker for their exemplary behavior.